Page 62 of Duty Preserved

“We don’t hit them with it,” I said.

“No. Never.” He said it flatly.

“You move a cow by stepping into the edge of her flight zone. Her personal space.” He gestured toward the nearest cow. “She turns away from you and moves forward. That is the whole tool.”

“Her flight zone,” Andrew repeated.

“Every animal has one. The distance where she notices you and begins to care. Step inside it calmly, and she moves. Step inside it too fast, and she panics. The stick makes you larger so you can reach the edge from farther away.”

I looked down at the thin length of wood in my hand. Twelve years in the Army. Five at Citadel. Every piece of equipment I’d ever carried had been designed to apply force. This was designed to merely suggest presence.

“You don’t try to direct all of them,” Zayn continued. “You find the dominant lead cows. The ones the others follow. Move them, and the rest come.”

The other rangers were already handing out sticks and sorting the remaining positions. It was clear none of them was learning this today. They were just doing it again.

Jomo walked out past the front of the herd and took point.

Nobody discussed it. He just went, the bad foot dragging through the grass, and when he reached his position thirty meters ahead of the lead cows, he planted his stick and waited.

The point position wasn’t about strength or speed. That much was obvious. It required something about vocal tonality and rhythm in the animal calls. The kid with the clubfoot had the thing the job required, and the herd was going to follow him.

I looked at the ground between us and him. Every one of those animals carried horns wider than my arm span, and a sixteen-year-old boy was standing alone at the front of all of them. I wasn’t sure I had the nerve for that job.

Jomo began calling. Cadenced vocal sounds that carried across the open ground, threaded with sharp whistle sequences. The rangers on the flanks stepped forward with their sticks out, working the edges of the lead cows’ space.

The first attempt didn’t take. The front of the herd shifted, the lead cows turning their massive heads, but the back half didn’t move. The whole column stretched and broke apart. Animals milling instead of walking, turning in on themselves. Someone was standing too far forward on the left flank, and the pressure was pushing the lead cows sideways instead of ahead.

The rangers backed off without being told. Reset. Adjusted spacing. Tried again.

Second time, it took. The lead cows turned and walked. Behind them, the herd followed, and the whole column began to move west.

The column found its shape within the first kilometer. Lead cows at the front. The bulk of the herd spread out behind them in a loose formation. It looked chaotic from the outside, but it held its own internal logic.

Rangers on the flanks. Citadel guys threaded through the middle and rear. The vehicles idling along a track that ran parallel, staging where Sarah had mapped them.

Ten minutes in, I pushed too hard.

I stepped into a cow’s space faster than I should have. I was trying to close a gap on the right flank, and she jolted forward, along with the three animals closest to her. A ripple of acceleration went through the near side of the herd. Animals that had been walking started trotting.

“Back off.” I heard Zayn’s voice, sharp. He was twenty meters away, and he’d seen it before I understood what I’d done. “Back away. Now.”

I stepped back. Pulled the stick in. The trotting animals slowed to a walk, and the ripple died.

“If you push them,” Zayn said, coming closer, “they run. And once they run, they are finished for the day. You will spend the rest of it gathering them. Every hour you spent this morning getting them moving will be wasted.”

“I was trying to close the gap.”

“The gap closes on its own. You wait for it.” He looked at me. “Going slower gets you there faster. I know that sounds wrong.”

Every instinct I had said apply pressure, increase tempo, close the distance. That was how I was used to moving through a problem. Bear down on it until it gave.

“Your first human instinct is usually wrong out here,” Zayn said, as if he’d heard the thought. “The herd sets the pace. You follow it.”

I made myself stay back. Made myself match the pace the animals had chosen. It worked just like Zayn had said.

An hour later, Zayn fell into step beside me. The herd was moving well, and his attention had shifted from managing the operation to educating me.

“That one.” He pointed with his stick at a rust-colored cow near the front of the column. “Jomo’s calls get the herd moving forward. But they are following her. See how the others give her space?”